Том Светерлич - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

“What have you done to him?” she says, her voice like someone grown weary of a long and brutal prank. “Timothy, what have you done to him?”

“Gregor,” he says. “Rory and Cormac—”

“Why did they do this?” she asks.

“They were preparing to do much worse when I stopped them,” says Timothy. “They wanted to open him up, collar to belly—they were going to hang him by the ankles and let him bleed out. I told Gregor that you were the one we wanted, but that you’d run if Dominic was dead. We needed him alive to get you—”

Albion takes the news stoically, like someone used to absorbing sudden horror.

“Are they here now?” she asks.

“Gregor and Rory are waiting for you at your house,” says Timothy. “I told them I’d bring you there. Cormac is at our camp here, waiting for me. We won’t have much time to get out of here before he comes looking for us—”

Albion removes a compact mirror from her pack and holds it up for me to see my reflection. Although she doesn’t angle it so I can view my entire body, I see enough—my chest wrapped in bandages and gauze, blood seeping through. My forehead had been slashed, almost torn from my skull, a ragged gash running from just above my right eye up across my scalp. Sloppily applied coagulant coats the stab wounds and slashes, a cloudy gel that’s hardened into a medicated carapace. My eyes are ringed with bruising, my mouth swollen. My right eye socket is crushed inward, the eye almost black with blood. She removes the mirror.

“Why are you helping us?” she asks.

“I’ve changed,” he says. “Alby, I’ve changed—”

“They won’t let this rest,” says Albion. “They’ll kill you. They’ll kill all of us—”

“There is a way out,” says Timothy. “I need to convince my father and my uncle that you’re both dead—”

“Don’t listen to this,” I tell Albion. “This man is a murderer. You showed me what he’s done. I’ve seen what he’s done to you, I’ve seen what he’s done to Peyton—”

Albion flinches at Peyton’s name.

“Albion,” says Timothy. He slides a flat white box from his backpack. He lifts the lid and reveals my Adware resting in a cushion of folded cloth. It looks like a tangle of golden wool, stained by flecks of my blood. “I removed this from him. It’s the only way—I need to send this to my father. I’ll tell him that I killed Dominic, disposed of him—as long as I have this, he’ll believe me—”

“That won’t be enough,” says Albion.

“No, you’re right—this won’t be enough,” says Timothy. “He’ll hire people to check my work, to look for Dominic’s body. He’ll want proof after proof of his death. He’ll want access to his account information, all his passwords. He’ll need to be certain that any shred of evidence that Dominic has found against him is eradicated. Dominic will need to get out of here. Out of the country, preferably—”

“Don’t listen to him,” I say. “Don’t listen to any of this—”

“Dominic needs to go to a hospital,” says Albion. “He’ll need money. You’re asking him to start a new life—”

“Money won’t be an issue,” says Timothy. “I’ve prepared everything—”

Albion turns to me. “Dominic, we can do this. There’s another place we can go, somewhere far up north—”

“You don’t understand,” says Timothy. “I can convince my father of Dominic’s death by giving over this Adware, but Dominic never mattered to him like you do. Convincing him that you’re dead without presenting your body to him will be much more difficult. I need to take you away, Albion. I need to hide you somewhere I know my father can’t look. I have a cabin in Washington State—it’s a private place. You’ll be comfortable. I’ll take you there, tell them all I killed you and disposed of you like they taught me. We’ll come up with something to show him, some images, as proof. Alby, come with me—”

“You killed her,” I tell him. “You killed her and you’re killing her again. Albion, what he did to you—”

“I remember everything,” says Albion.

“Listen to me: God changed me,” says Timothy.

“You’re wrapped up in all this death,” I tell him. “You’re trying to convince us of Christ, you’re trying to convince yourself that you’ve changed, but all you want is to take her away again, to keep her for yourself. Look at you. You’re desperate. You don’t look like a man who’s found peace—”

“I was never offered peace in this world,” says Timothy. “Every day I live with the weight of what I’ve done. I was never offered anything remotely like peace, but I am offered grace. I want to work to earn God’s grace—”

“Grace isn’t God’s to give,” says Albion. “Grace is ours to give.”

Timothy’s eyes are quavering pools, his face fatigued. He’s several inches shorter than Albion and watching them is like watching a supplicant before a queen.

“Let Dominic rest,” says Albion. “Timothy, we should talk. There are arrangements we need to make—”

Timothy injects me with medication from a clear bottle. Albion kisses my forehead, my eyes, my lips. I feel numbness beyond the numbness of the medication, like my soul has dropped through the darkness of the earth to slumber in the soil. I listen to the ringing in my ears like listening to chiming bells, straining to hear what Albion and Timothy are saying to each other, their voices at first just whispers but swelling into a clipped argument. I can’t distinguish their words—I try to listen, but the numbness swallows me just like it has swallowed every other pain.

Beige walls and a television stuck on Riot —Japanese horror shows and loops of backyard accidents ending in horrific injury—smashed groins, face-plants. I saw a water-skier’s legs chopped apart by a motorboat. I saw a guy decapitated when he flipped over the handlebars of his Quad. Whipped and Creamed marathons play late every night.

The highlight of each day comes around ten when Brianna, one of the nurses, wheels the breakfast cart onto our floor. “Morning,” she hollers to every room, her phlegmy cackle reverberating through the halls as she makes her rounds. She’s missing her bottom front teeth and lets her dentures dangle from her mouth when she asks, “Hotcakes or omelet, honey?” I learned early on that hotcakes are the only viable option, the omelets rubbery and so banana yellow they seem to taste like Yellow No. 5. Brianna likes Riot TV, so she sits for a few minutes beside my bed under the pretense of helping me with my breakfast—she unpeels the foil lids from the coffee and orange juice, something I’m grateful for because I can’t manage with my hands the way they are, and cuts apart the hotcakes and sausage links. She’s riveted by Riot and laughs great belly laughs whenever someone’s hurt—cheerleaders landing on their necks, kids’ teeth broken by pogo sticks—actually crying because she’s laughing so hard.

On my second day awake, Brianna told me I’d been lying here for five days already.

“Where’s here?” I asked her.

“Saint Elizabeth’s,” she said. “Youngstown. Do you know where Youngstown is?”

“Ohio—”

“And I thought you’d say heaven—”

I’ve been in this hospital for a little over five weeks. I’m in the uninsured wing, with street people and drug addicts and howling lunatics housed three or four to a room, the kind of clinic I floated through not long ago when I was hooked on brown sugar. Compared to the others here, though, I’m in comfort: one of the administrators told me I was in a private room because my bill’s already been paid in cash—mystifying, though Timothy did say he’d take care of my medical expenses. When the administrator asked for my name and social security number, I told her I couldn’t remember, a response that must be somewhat typical here because of the way she breezed through the rest of the form without cross-examining me.